Leclerc selection to head hospital agency advances
PROVIDENCE – Richard Leclerc, the retired president and CEO of Gateway Healthcare, is on his way to becoming the new director of the state’s sprawling Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities & Hospitals after a vote of confidence by a Senate committee.
The Senate Committee on Health and Human Services voted unanimously on Thursday night to recommend Leclerc’s appointment to the full Senate for an anticipated vote next week.
Among the goals he spelled out for the legislators, he cited addressing stigma and negative perceptions around “mental health and substance use disorders” and removing barriers to care and recovery.
“Research clearly indicates that virtually all families have experienced the effects and stress of one or more of their family members dealing with mental health or substance use disorders, with trauma, and with co-occurring disorder diagnoses,” he said. Among his other goals:
Provide 24/7 mobile crisis services to children and adults.
Initiate targeted outreach services to communities of color and other underserved and under-resourced communities to help reduce health outcome disparities in our state.
Develop pathways for addressing health-related social needs.
And, more broadly: “establishing the right future for Eleanor Slater Hospital, ensuring that it fits appropriately within the state’s continuum of care.”
Gov. Dan McKee’s appointment of Leclerc to the top job in the $327-million agency that runs the state hospitals in Cranston and Burrillville, the state’s stand-alone psychiatric hospital and an array of mental health programs drew praise.
Citing Leclerc’s decades at Gateway, his more recent roles as project director at Newport Mental Health and as a state consultant on “a generational transformation in delivering critical health care services to Rhode Islanders most in need,” Matthew Gunnip, president of Local 580 Service Employees International Union, said Leclerc “has the professional experience, credentials and character necessary to lead one of the state’s largest agencies.”
“If confirmed, we are confident Rich Leclerc would hit the ground running,” Gunnip said.
In his own turn, Leclerc talked about the twists and turns in his own background that led him from international finance on Wall Street to the health and human services field, with a master’s in social work from Boston College.
His first job in the field working for the NRI Community Mental Health Center (now the Community Care Alliance), had him on the front lines, visiting patients to help them “transition back into the community” with housing and financial assistance, as well as help scheduling medical appointments, and securing counseling and transportation.
For the next 30 years, he was executive director of the Community Counseling Center, which grew into what became Gateway Healthcare; at its peak, the agency “served about 15,000 individuals annually, employed over 500 staff, and brought online over 120 units of affordable independent housing in several communities throughout Rhode Island.”
Since his retirement from Gateway in 2016, Leclerc said he has had a number of roles, including a job with the Faulkner Consulting Group advising BHDDH on the rollout of a new model for the state’s behavioral health care clinics.
While the firm was paid more than $7 million last year by a number of state agencies, a state spokeswoman said Faulkner Consulting Group’s contract with just BHDDH included $150,000 from Sept. 13, 2022, to Aug. 21, 2023, and $75,000 from Sept. 1, 2023, to Feb. 29, 2024.